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Our Daily Bread

2am, Shangri-La: The Bread of Life
12am, The Chedi: German Grain at Midnight
3pm, Grand Hyatt Muscat: 1,000 Gaas and One Stick of Celery

Bread has become so part of our daily life that it has vanished from our immediate consciousness, fading away into the breakfast table, or something to mop up the gravy with. You slap butter onto it, stuff a million fillings between it, and eat everything from curry to fried eggs with it. You do not find it on menus, and no restaurant serves bread. And yet, ironically, it would be the first thing on your table, a complimentary basket, a bunch of crunchy sticks on the bar counter, a sandwich in a million lunches, the food of man, mentioned in scripture, embossed in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Bread is nowhere and everywhere.

Man invented bread, and it might have been enough reason for him to stop a nomadic hunter-gatherer existence, settle down, grow cereals, and develop civilisations. If we are what we eat, bread is man.

Humble to some, classic to others, bread deserves a story. This is the inside look at the hidden world, of workdays that start at two in the morning, and lives spent feeding others. This is the bottom of the food chain, where it all begins. The rest is garnishing.
2am, Shangri-La: The Bread of Life

It is two in the morning, and while a young, sleepless crowd is slowly dragging itself out of the Piano Lounge, a maze of hidden passages below is coming to life, filling with the soft pitter-patter of anonymous footfalls and a softer puff of flour.

Chef Wolfgang Schwaerzler, brooding over a lone cupcake that didn’t fluff sufficiently, says it all, in one brief, all-encompassing burst: “Bread is life.” His has revolved around this staple for 30 years, from the good old days when one’s mother thought it was a useful, good occupation for a son in a large family to pursue. This was how he started. “You never lose anything,” she had said about being a baker. “You only gain.” What Wolfgang has gained is the satisfaction that comes when, as he says, “You can feed people well and earn your living through it.” And it is in such ways that he keeps alive what has always been considered a noble tradition, from the heart of Europe’s breadbasket to the new Middle East.

By three in the morning, as we get teary-eyed from too little sleep and too much dough, Wolfgang wedges his large German frame into an office crammed with racks of supplies and files of bread recipes, thumbing through the classics, and snuffing out half-hearted ideas and additions to a tradition that has stood strong for generations. There have been bread fads that have come and gone over the years, but for Wolfgang there is really only one kind of bread. And that is good bread.

The keeper of such tradition is the baker, as scientist. For while a restaurant chef might pair a melon with lobster and then drown it in ice cream, a baker has to use the same simple ingredients to make something that has changed little over thousands of years. Americans might make theirs out of corn, the French might prefer the white baguette, Germany might veer towards the dark and heavy, South Americans might gulp tacos, Pakistanis might tear through naans and Punjabis might slap layers over a lachcha paratha, but they all owe their base to a simple, clean design that has succeeded in feeding generations. A baker, instead of relying on a passionate, glamorous rush of inspiration, instead records and calculates every inch of the process. “Recipes are everything,” says Wolfgang. For him it is a science, about scale and precision, and this carefully thought out scheme acts out its play in one not too large room that churns out 15 different doughs and 1,000 rolls of bread every day for the three hotels above. They use rulers here, and measure the exact centimetres it takes to make an acceptably long flat dough that they cut into little squares with instruments that could have come out of an operation theatre, and these little squares will then be folded, and cut – just so – to make little stars that will go into the oven that will chime at the exact moment after the exact temperature. And all we see is the breadbasket on the tables above, something so common that we take it for granted. But that is exactly the beauty of bread: a style so basic it does not have a style, so much a part of life it has merged into it, as it does into the fabric of a breakfast table. And continues to do so day after day, every day, for the rest of our lives.

Wolfgang’s introduction to the bakery:
Executive pastry chef Wolfgang Schwaerzler is crystal clear when it comes to his dough. “In the bakery we want to develop the gluten that is present in the wheat flour. Generalising, we can say that there are three varieties of baked products: doughs, masses (batters), pastes into which, as a rule a leavening agent gets introduced. The wide variety of breads produced comes from the manipulation of a few simple products.”

One of the primary goals of the bakery shop is to understand the proper handling and use of flour. This is one of the main themes of Wolfgang’s take on ingredients:

Ingredients for the bakery:

Flour
There are many kind of flour, based on the wheat and grain from which they are milled. The most important property of flour relating to baking is the gluten and moisture absorbing characteristics. Dry flour will take up much more water than flour that has been stored in a humid environment.

Water
For any dough the water should be temperate. Water steam and hot air helps the dough expand.

Sugar
Accompanying colour, caramelised taste and textures, its food for the yeast. Sugar is the oldest natural form of preventing food and has the ability to naturally retain moisture.

Leavening agents
Almost all breads of the world are leavened, the most common agent of which is yeast. Bread dough is able to be leavened or expanded by one or three ingredients: carbon dioxide, hot air or steam. There is an elastic network of gluten protein strands that stretch and trap all these. This is what we call the rising of the dough.

Starters:
Used to add flavour to the product and a booster for the fresh yeast.

Shorteners and fat:
Shorteners are fats that shorten the length of the gluten strands by surrounding them with lubricating fat or oil. Shorteners help to retain moisture, contribute to both flavour and colour. They also help to expand the product. Dough can be classified as lean or rich depending on how much shortening, and sugar, is used.

Salt :
Gives the dough a better taste and it also controls the growing of yeast, and helps the gluten in developing there strands.

Dried milk powder:
Milk powder by the evaporation of water from the milk by heat.

12am, The Chedi: Breakfast for Champions

Ingredients:
Norlaender flour mix, 500g
Sunflower seeds, 50g
Linseeds, 25g
Sesame seeds, 25g
Rye flakes, 25g
Fresh yeast, 18g or dry yeast, 8g
Malz Ulmin (a brand of liquid malt darkener), 10ml
Salt, 11g
Water, 250-300ml

Method
In a dough mixer, mix all ingredients together for six minutes in slow mixing setting. Then continue on for three minutes using fast mixing setting.

Cover and let the mixed dough rest at room temperature for 30 minutes with cover.
Bake in oven at 220ºC for about 40 minutes until dark brown.

After 20 years of experimenting with bread, Chef John Fernandes believes he’s on to something big at midnight. It is 12am at The Chedi, and while the last bits of dinner are mopped up, the bakery is starting to work for the next breakfast.

In his tightly controlled workspace, John is overseeing the making of 36 different kinds of bread. But his absolute favourite among this mass of baguettes, bar munchers, rolls, rustic breads, aristocratic ones, bread with herbs and breads whose names you cannot pronounce is the multi-grain loaf, or as it is called in back office back-slapping slang, mama’s German bread. Now no one knows whose mama she is, but her recipe was first handed over to John by a German baker. It had been lighter then, but John added the 150 grams of sunflower seeds, linseeds, sesame seeds and rye flakes, until it approached its present form. “I increased the seeds,” he says, “and reduced the flour.”
Hold a loaf in your hand and you’ll see why John is shouting from The Chedi rooftop. This is thick, dark, heavy bread, a loaf that will force others into submission. It has a texture that will scrape over your tongue and knead it into coercion, and its mud-like earthy taste is best left un-tampered with. Have it with a good, unsalted butter, at the most. This bread is a hero. You do not want anything else.

“One slice is enough,” bellows John. It might be, but you’ll want more. “Bodybuilders take supplements, but I’d recommend my bread. One cut has enough nutrients to see you through the day.”

3pm, Grand Hyatt Muscat: 1,000 Gaas and One Stick of Celery

There are only 1,000 Gaas in the world, and one of them has married celery to bread. Meet Chef Thomas Gaa, of the Grand Hyatt Muscat: a slight, soft-spoken man who was as flummoxed by his name as you are.

A professional name researcher in Germany traced back the Gaa family to Ireland, where the earliest records show they were alive and well in 1100AD. For reasons best left to the Gaas they moved to England in 1450 and then on to the Netherlands, before arriving in France, staying there from 1720 to 1910, and then, finally, Germany. 500 of them are now around Chicago, 150 in Germany and the rest are spread around the world. And Gaa was originally Goa, but that has been lost to history, along with why there are so few Gaas.

Thomas played around with the idea of salad greens and bread for some time, and his experiments with celery have been so successful you will be served it when you dine at Tuscany. Because the celery is characteristically salty, it needs a bit of pre-preparation, where it is cooked a bit before being baked with the bread. According to such thought, less salt is introduced into the dough too. “Bread does not have as much meaning in Asia as rice, but it is healthier. You can eat it your whole life,” says the chef. “The celery bread goes well with risotto, which you can try at Tuscany, and any kind of soup that isn’t spicy, as well as with steaks and salads.”

Thomas started off as a pastry chef, but quickly saw the opportunity for exploring new horizons. At this point he had just basic knowledge about the craft of bread, so he started studying it in depth at a bakery. “Bread is essential and will always exist. I have always preferred rye bread, but am a big fan of celery bread now.” Preparation Chop the celery into cubes and steam in light boiling water for three minutes. Drain and allow to cool down. Grate the cheese and keep it aside.

Put the flour, butter, yeast, salt and pepper in a mixing machine. Heat the milk until lukewarm and add. Mix into a smooth dough.

Carefully fold the celery and cheese under the dough. Take it out of the machine and divide it into four parts, each weighing around 580g.

Give it a rest of 15 minutes, then form into loafs. Place on a tray and keep this in a warm place until it has doubled in size.

Bake at 190ºC for 45 minutes. Make sure you have more heat under. If the top tends to colour fast, just cover with baking paper.

You can use it for sandwiches, accompaniment to soup or other dishes or just have it plain with a little butter or margarine.

Why Chef Thomas loves his bread:
It is a stable food of different cultures, prepared by baking, steaming or frying, Different variations come out of a basic recipe, including pizza, chapatis, tortillas, baguettes, brioche, pitas, lavash, biscuits, pretzels, naan, bagels, puris and others.

There are innumerable ways in which the world makes its bread. In Europe you’ll find mostly rye and wheat flour bread, in Asia rotis or chapatis, in South America tortillas, in North America corn bread, in Africa a flat bread similar to naan called injera.

Bread is one of the oldest prepared foods, dating back to the neolithic era. The development of leavened bread can be traced to prehistoric times.

Egyptians produced a flat bread called ta in the 12th century.
Its basic ingredients are flour, water, yeast, salt. For different variations you can use also milk, herbs, butter, vegetable, oil, spelt.

Bread is healthy and contains minerals, vitamins, carbohydrates, proteins and less fat.
There are more than 300 different kinds of bread available throughout the continents.
Bread plays a major role in people’s day to day life.

In the 15th century white bread was used for rich people, while brown bread was given to and used for the poor. These days, most people eat white bread, while a few enjoy the brown variety, according to personal preferences.